| The first excerpt represents the past or something you must release, and is drawn from The Red Inn by Honore de Balzac: middle ground between the reverie of a thinker and the comfort of the
ruminating animals; a condition which we may call the material
melancholy of gastronomy.
So the guests now turned spontaneously to the excellent German,
delighted to have a tale to listen to, even though it might prove of
no interest. During this blessed interregnum the voice of a narrator
is always delightful to our languid senses; it increases their
negative happiness. I, a seeker after impressions, admired the faces
about me, enlivened by smiles, beaming in the light of the wax
candles, and somewhat flushed by our late good cheer; their diverse
expressions producing piquant effects seen among the porcelain
|
The second excerpt represents the present or the deciding factor of the moment, and is drawn from The Black Tulip by Alexandre Dumas: I have told you already."
"Well, then, what is it?"
"I repeat the question I have addressed to you before."
"Which?"
"That you will order Mynheer Boxtel to come here with his
tulip. If I do not recognise it as mine I will frankly tell
it; but if I do recognise it I will reclaim it, even if I go
before his Highness the Stadtholder himself, with my proofs
in my hands."
"You have, then, some proofs, my child?"
"God, who knows my good right, will assist me to some."
The Black Tulip |
The third excerpt represents the future or something you must embrace, and is drawn from One Basket by Edna Ferber: on a farm all my life, slavin' for a pack of menfolks day and
night, I'd rather have died. Might as well be dead as rottin'
here."
Her schoolteacher English had early reverted. Her speech was as
slovenly as her dress. She grew stout, too, and unwieldy, and
her skin coarsened from lack of care and from overeating. And in
her children's ears she continually dinned a hatred of farm life
and farming. "You can get away from it," she counseled her
daughter, Minnie. "Don't you be a rube like your pa," she
cautioned John, the older boy. And they profited by her ad-
vice. Minnie went to work in Commercial when she was seventeen,
One Basket |
